you're a few years too late and fate just won't g
by pixie paramount
Summary: From beginning to end, this is how she lived and how she died. It’s not a good story to tell. — Claire-centric; Spoilers for Season Three. Slightly AU. One-shot. Note: incest.


**-you're a few years too late (and fate just won't give you a break)  
---by:** pixie paramount (9/28/2008, 8:27 AM)

* * *

From beginning to end, this is how she lived and how she died.

It's not a good story to tell.

-

If she where less of the little sheltered girl in Texas, hardened only by her experiences and the annoying tendency to care too much, Claire supposes that what comes next wouldn't be so surprising, in the end.

After all, the Big Bad Wolf emdid/em get his greedy hands on Little Red Riding Hood, after all. Gobbled her up whole with little time to scream or ever plead. A heartless beast—no, monster—with a thirst, a hunger that could never be fully sated.

The monster that comes knocking—or, rather, appears to her cloaked in shadows—is named Sylar, and she's already hated him, feared him, since the beginning. It's the hunger in his eyes, the fear that engulfs her, the sense to survive that makes her feel like she's like she's human.

-

It's become natural, almost second nature, to hate him.

He doesn't feel like normal humans do. He doesn't look at another person as equal, as worthy of life as he is or even as simply as on his level.

He thinks he's a God on Earth sent to tinker and toy and discover weaknesses and strengths to gather up and harvest. To reap the rewards and become something beyond normal convention. Perhaps even special.

She doesn't think—not exactly; just feels (anger, hatred, fear)—much as he explores. Tinkers, toys, probes at; so transfixed in the task at hand, as if he where tinkering with a grandfather clock that's pendulum won't budge.

Like a predator, however, there is a cold, emotionless, detachment to him as she lies there—staring numbly at the ceiling and wishing, wanting, to be safe is Daddy's arms like the little girl she's tried to grown out of in the years.

-

("Are you going to eat it?"

"…Clair, that's disgusting.")

-

If you can not feel are you human?

All evidence points otherwise.

-

The definition of a sociopath is clear and simple: it's a pattern of behavior often defined by the disregard for, or violation of, the right of other's.

So Mr. Webster says. But words and their meanings can change with time, having done so over the centuries. New words can be adopted and others can die, cease to exist for the tongues of man to utter or pronounce.

So she clotches it to her and trembles with the terrible, irresistible urge to return the hurt—to seek out the primitive monster and set it free. Fragile like glass, like a bomb that tick-tick-ticks faintly in the distance before it explodes.

-

At first, all she wants is stability. To have a calm word or two to be addressed to her, ready on hand for her.

She wants her father, who would brush her hair out of her eyes and kiss everything all better.

She wants Peter and his slight, boyishly crooked smile and dimples; wants his reassuring optimism to wash over her like a wave crashing into her.

She wants them to just shut up and emlisten/em to what she has to says.

emI need you/em, she thinks. Her voice won't come when they leave. She wants to scream and throw rocks at their backs; wants them to raise their voices in anger or disappointment ("Look at yourself, you're acting like a child!").

To turn on around and hold her close, keep her feeling safe even as the world starts turning, as it inches closer and closer to the sun's welcome grin.

emI need you to listen and comfort me, tell me everything will be alright—you'll be my shining knight, you'll help me to save myself, help me to make sure that this will never be to anyone else but me/em.

But they don't. Their words are harried and they leave like a gust of wind—short and fleeting, leaving her shaken to the bones and her tears slithering down her cheeks like a snake once did, long before, in a garden long before.

-

The world is changing all around her.

She feels fragile—so close to death yet so far—like a bubble that's near its breaking point. She's just waiting for that day her heart won't start up again.

He called her special. A small grin playing on his face as he said so, as if he where relinquishing a secret that only he knew and one that she could potentially realize—with time.

She can never die yet she can't feel the touch of the boy she likes, the sharp spike of pain when a bullet hits, the impact of a train at full force.

She wonders if she's even human or if she's becoming a sick monster like him.

She thinks a lot about fate and the hand it plays in these things Ponders a on a future that might be painted in the blood of innocents, where she is a victim or a bargaining chip for the rest of her not so natural existence.

(Than she thinks of him in a future where he'll feel the dull, sharp tug of his bones going out of place but never dying and vows to put a stop to that—for herself and the people he's bound to hurt.

But mostly, to stop the hurt.)

-

In a not so different future, before a Butterfly Affect or Peter's meddling, Nathan told the world.

And the world knew, and the world feared, and the collective governments and scientists came together and studied and probed and tested.

Not all that different from the company, really.

Except, her father could at least protect her from the company.

There was no such luck when the US government came knocking.

-

Peter would tell her, so softly, how everything would be alright.

He lied.

-

It's too late to turn the clock back, now.

She wanted to believe him—really, she had—but there's a monster that won't die (the one that made her the way she is now), and she just can't let that be. Not in this world or any other.

And it would break his heart to see her this way, a little girl lost; her hair a dark mess and blood-stained cloths.

So she cocks the gun, presses it to the back of his head, and swallows. "It's too late to save me now."

-

Peter has this look in his eyes the next time they meet. He lies cold and dead on a gurney while his past self—the one that will carry all the missed chances like a curse—asleep next to him.

Looking at him now, he reminds her of those lovesick puppies in a shelter, who've been kicked and had unspeakable things thrust upon them but so hope for that one person that can fix them, make everything all better.

But that's too far gone now. Time has ticked away and she can't feel how sharply her nails dig into her palm. There is only a single thought to enter her mind, emYou abandoned me Peter/em and it's the end of that.

It makes her feel human to hurt. To press the keen edge of the scalpel to his skin and be rewarded with her bleeding hearts blood, to have him wake up and stare up at her in shock and distress. To have the sudden realization that he's been betrayed and his future ending in death.

And for that, she cuts deeper and harder and hopes to leave a mark that won't heal—a permanent mark, one he'll hold onto and remember and, perhaps, even hate her for—just like the one emhe/em left her not long ago. When he didn't stay when she most needed him, because in this future she is selfish and hurting and wants to emeverything to hurt/em like she does.


End file.
